VOORHEES, N.J. — He confirmed there will be a new head coach in place sometime during the offseason, playfully added “a little bit of both” when asked whether he’d be spending another long offseason trying to woo free agents and/or making trades rather than working on stockpiling prospects and assets for a future that never seems to come.
Flyers still-general-manager Chuck Fletcher said a lot of things Tuesday, many of which were explanatory rather than defensive. Yet he and his hockey organization certainly have a lot to be defensive about.
Near the top of the list: 57 losses in 82 games. Even more important: the fact that many of the losses came in front of huge sections of empty seats at Wells Fargo Center.
So here was Fletcher sitting at his fourth season-ending media session as a Flyers GM, with his boss Dave Scott in absentia, talking about hiring what will be his fifth head coach since he came into the job. Hey, for NHL GMs, averaging about one head coach per year isn’t all that uncommon. Except this one was trying to keep up a Flyers front office tradition of talking about how bright the future is while the fans are celebrating the 46th anniversary of the last franchise championship parade.
“We’re in the business of winning,” Fletcher said. “When you don’t win, there’s pressure. That’s the job. I don’t think I feel any more pressure this summer than any other offseason. Again, I’m fortunate that Dave has given me all the resources to bring in the staff that we have, and we have a great staff. We have a lot of bright people with a lot of bright ideas and I’m excited about the opportunities that we’re going to have over the next few weeks to put a game plan together and see what we’re able to make happen.”
At last they can (re-)start that journey from almost the bottom, as only the Flyers’ 2006-07 finish at 56 points was a lower point for any full, 82-game (or 80, for that matter) season than this season’s 61-point finish. Many observers have noted how that team had many young, quickly developing players on their roster or on that of the AHL Phantoms, which was partly the reason for a Stanley Cup finals appearance three years later.
This team? Fletcher is ready to hype its young players, mentioning Tuesday how Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, Ivan Provorov, Joel Farabee and goalie Carter Hart now have to step up as solid veterans hitting their primes. The fact that six-year forward Konecny (16 goals, 36 points, minus-23) and six-year defenseman Provorov (9 goals, 31 points, minus-20) are both formerly blooming stars now coming off two consecutive mediocre (at best) seasons, while doubt remains that Hart is the long-term savior in the crease.
Konecny’s goal scoring problems remain a mystery, but Provorov’s issues are of greater concern. That’s because since Matt Niskanen walked away from his contract into safe retirement during the COVID crisis, Provorov hasn’t had a top-pairing partner with which he seems comfortable.
That’s why Fletcher traded for top-shelf two-way defender Ryan Ellis last year. He promptly played four games, and said Saturday that he is only now feeling confident in a plan to treat whatever groin/core muscle/etc. injury issues dogged him all year, after apparently consulting outside medical sources. With no surgery scheduled, months of rehab are still to come for Ellis. And yet?
“This is the best I’ve felt about things in a while and I think he spoke to this the other day,” Fletcher said of Ellis. “…It’s basically multiple injuries. There’s no clean and easy one-step solution to the problem, but I think we have a great plan in place now. It’s a pretty aggressive plan and I like it because I think there’s pretty big upside if all goes as scheduled. The goal is to have him back at the beginning of next season.
“We’re going to see how things progress here over the next four, six, eight weeks and that’s what this plan envisions. … We’ll have a pretty good idea where he’s feeling by the end of June, early July, and that ducktails well with when the bulk of the offseason activity happens.”
The same fingers are crossed when it comes to Sean Couturier eventually returning to form after back surgery which wiped out much of his season. But without old partners Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek and the like, you wonder what he might look like when he does return.
As for prospect players hitting the big time, Fletcher said he has much faith in defenseman Cam York, is hoping to see Morgan Frost continue to improve, and is “excited” about the prospects of emergency arrivals such as Owen Tippett, Zack MacEwen, Bobby Brink and Hayden Hodgson, along with longstanding prospects Frost, Wade Allison, Tyson Foerster and Tanner Laczynski.
Except that those last four guys all missed huge chunks of playing time over the last two seasons with serious injuries. The current Flyers are only part of the Philadelphia hockey injury story’s last two seasonal chapters.
“You go back to that ’19-20 season where we played really well and played the right way. Prior to the (COVID) pause, we were one of the best teams in the league,” Fletcher lamented. “The process was good and the results were good. We were clicking and clearly the last two seasons for various reasons, we just haven’t been able to get back to that level.
“Clearly injuries were a significant part of things, but I think it goes a little bit deeper than that. We just really struggled this year. We were defending all the time and that is something we have to look at. We were not exiting our (defensive) zone well enough. There are certainly things we have to look at in terms of our structure and our details. We didn’t have the puck enough and when you defend all the time, bad things happen.”
Fletcher added for that and other reasons, “we couldn’t keep the puck out of our net.” Nor could they keep the fans in their building, even those who had already paid for the seats. That has to be Fletcher’s main concern, for self-preservation if nothing else.
“Dave Scott and Comcast are great,” Fletcher thought to say. “Of course, the revenue is a concern, but the bigger concern is getting the club to be more competitive. Revenues will follow as we get better. Our focus is on getting the best hockey team possible, so fans do want to come back. The pressure is about winning and not necessarily on revenues.”